Is there any way to see if a car stereo works without installing it?

Question

I have a stereo that I pulled out of my old truck because I thought the auxiliary input was broken. It turned out it was just the cord I plugged my mp3 player in with.

That truck is gone now and my new truck only has am/fm and they would have to cut the dash to install a new one. I dont want to have to spend the money to get this one installed if the input doesn't work...so is there any way they can test it at the car audio store?

Answer 1

yes they have the tools to test it...good luck

Answer 2

They can test whether or not the unit powers on before doing any form of installation. Most car audio stores have an area where they can bench test items. They just need to run the constant and accessory wire to positive, and the ground wire to negative.

Answer 3

The easiest way to bench test your deck is to use a charged car battery and a couple of working speaker boxes.  WIre the speaker wires from your deck to the inputs to the speaker boxes.  Typically, deck speaker wires have two of the same colour of wires with one wire having a black strip down the length of wire.  Speaker wires are typically, white, green, grey, brown.  

Then, you need to hook up the deck power wires to your charged battery.  Run a jumper wire from the positive battery terminal to the red, yellow and orange wires from the deck.  The black wire from the deck is your ground and must go the negative battery terminal.  

The deck should power up and you can test the deck functions and output.  

Good luck, I hope it works out for you.